When Vincent Darbenzio had not answered his radio or cellphone for 45 minutes, veteran cab driver Robert Ely knew it was a bad omen.

On his way to check on Mr. Darbenzio at Valley View Terrace in Scranton, Mr. Ely confirmed his worst fears when he found his close friend, co-worker and the father of two had taken his last fare.

City police charged 16-year-old Aazis Richardson with fatally shooting Mr. Darbenzio. The Scranton teenager told police he killed the driver because he was convinced Mr. Darbenzio did not take the quickest possible route between Washburn Street and Valley View Terrace early last Friday.

While the case moves through the criminal justice system, Mr. Darbenzio’s loved ones struggle to process the tragedy and pick up the pieces after losing someone they described as a good man who would help anyone.

Mr. Ely not only has to deal with the void in his life that the death of the 47-year-old left, but also with feelings of guilt from encouraging his friend to work with him at McCarthy Flowered Cabs when business slowed down at his job as an auto mechanic.

Mr. Darbenzio loved cars, grew up in South Scranton and knew the city’s streets like the back of his hand. It seemed like a natural fit.

“It was terrible,” Mr. Ely said. “I told him to come work here and felt guilty as hell when I found him. ... If I didn’t push him to work here, it would have been me or somebody else.”

The pair first met at a poker game in Dunmore about 10 years ago and immediately hit it off. Over the next decade, Mr. Ely learned his friend was an honest, hard-working and easy-going man who had a great sense of humor, always wanting to help people, He had a talent for fixing things.

“He had hands of gold,” the Hamlin resident said. “He could fix anything.”

Mr. Ely, owner of Stinky’s Chili, recalled a woman walked into the Scranton restaurant with a broken cork shoe while Mr. Darbenzio was hanging around.

Worried the woman would step on broken glass on Spruce Street, Mr. Darbenzio offered to fix the shoe and somehow managed to mend it with a screw.

“He was a regular salt of the earth kind of guy,” Mr. Ely said. “They don’t make guys like him anymore.”

Before Mr. Darbenzio was killed, the pair talked about taking the restaurant to the streets with a lunch truck, using Mr. Darbenzio’s expertise as a welder and with auto repairs, and perhaps Mr. Ely’s carpentry talents.

Mr. Ely said the fact that his buddy’s funeral was “mobbed” showed how much he meant to others.

Several friends and acquaintances used many of the same words to describe Mr. Darbenzio as Mr. Ely, even coworkers who just got to know him during his month at McCarthy Flowered Cabs.

“He’d give you the shirt off his back,” said Larry Meyers, a driver who first met Mr. Darbenzio through his brother 30 years ago and reconnected with him after all this time through work.

Blythe Munley, now 41 years old, got to know Mr. Darbenzio when he dated one of her friends while she was in her teens, and even after all this time, his death compelled her to start a Facebook group in his memory that gained 640 “likes” in its first two days.

“He was always so polite,” Ms. Munley said. “He was a sweet man. If you needed something, he would help.”

Contact the writer: kwind@timesshamrock.com, @kwindTT on Twitter

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